It has already come to light that sleep directly affects your everyday life and well-being. Many people have known full well that the quality of sleep that an individual gets equates to the quality of life that they are living. As technology has become rampant nowadays, it is really difficult to sleep on the exact time as the body wants to, as what they’ve said— it’s too good to pass through.
However, if you find yourself breaking the bad habit and starts to have a continuous cycle of sleep loss, which then resulted to an exhausted individual the next day —you may want to start looking after yourself for the unhealthy sleeping habits. Here’s a list of the taboo activities that you should avoid if you want a healthy sleep and well-being.
Ignoring Your Body Clock
Our body is wired to a 24-hour biological clock which tells us when to sleep and when to wake up. This kind of body cycle is affected by a hormone mainly called melatonin which is affected by an individual’s physical activity, social interactions, and most importantly, light. Light has a controlling influence over the body which regulates the body’s clock night and daytime.
However, working in an environment full of artificial light might slightly affect the cycle. To avoid this, an outdoor walk at lunch serves both fitness and sleep; the sun will tell your body it’s midday and makes sure the body clock keeps ticking in alignment with the day-night cycle, Ph.D. and vice president of sleep science, Dr. Raymann says.
Eating Too Close to Bedtime
Eating too close to bedtime can disrupt your sleep, mainly because of the acids that your stomach will be producing during the process of your food within the body. Additionally, lying down can cause the stomach acids to creep up into your throat which may result in uneasiness and sleep disruption.
Generally speaking, it is recommended that you wait for 2 to 3 hours between your last meal and bedtime. By doing this, it allows the digestion of the food eaten to occur and the contents of your stomach to move into your small intestine. This would result in the prevention of problems such as heartburn at night or even insomnia.
Drinking Caffeine
Of course, you really do not need to entirely stop your coffee intake. However, you need to avoid consuming drinks that contain caffeine late in the day. A single dose of caffeine in the morning benefits us in a way that it can enhance focus, energy, and sports performance—but that may not be the case if you drink caffeine it late in the day.
Caffeine is stimulants that can make it difficult to go to sleep or stay asleep until the chemicals wear off if taken within 3 hours of bedtime. This is mainly due to the fact that caffeine can stay in the blood for 6-8 hours. Thus, drinking coffee after 3-4 p.m. is not recommended especially if you are having trouble sleeping.
Drinking Alcohol before Bedtime
It is commonly known that alcoholic drinks, from beer to wine or spirits can sometimes leave you feeling drowsy. In fact, most people believe in and use this type of method to fall asleep faster. Although, you are maybe thinking that alcohol helps you to sleep as quickly as possible but that is not true since it can negatively affect your sleep and hormones.
Alcohol is known to be a depressant, which means it does help you fall asleep faster. However, it contributes to poor sleep quality. Drinking alcohol before sleep is linked with more slow-wave sleep patterns and may inhibit the restorative sleep of the sleep cycle. Additionally, it interrupts you in the middle of your sleep, which most likely will keep you awake for a certain period of time.
Technology in the Bed
It was stated beforehand that melatonin plays a vital role in an individual’s biological clock and how light affects the said hormone due to its controlling influence over the body which regulates the circadian rhythm. The blue light emitted from the screens of the gadgets restrains the production of melatonin which makes it harder to fall and stay asleep.
Start minimizing your blue light exposure by downloading certain phone application to block the blue light from your phone and computer or you can just turn off any bright lights and stop the usage of electronic devices 2 hours before heading to bed
Take Away
Unhealthy sleeping may result in a drastic change in an individual’s body which might lead to some serious illness that may be acquired due to sleep deprivation. Obesity, developing heart disease, and type 2 diabetes is some of the illness that one may get due to the neglect of one’s quality of sleep.
